Kathy Coffey

One of the most striking sentences in the first reading from Acts (2:4) describes people speaking different languages, yet still being understood. We all know that even those who speak the same language can have a hard time communicating. Pentecost reverses The Tower of Babel story, which tries to explain why people began speaking in different languages. The people that day achieved understanding, despite their linguistic differences.

Pentecost continues today, as African students in an ESL classroom learn English and across the hall, North Americans learn Spanish. A young California woman who had emergency gall bladder surgery in a Tokyo hospital felt alone and afraid, unable to communicate with or understand her nurses and doctors. She was placed in the oncology ward because a few nurses there knew some English. But another patient broke down the language barrier. She simply lifted her hospital gown and showed the American her scar, a silent signal that she could relate to the girl’s pain.

One way to celebrate Pentecost is to appreciate the Holy Spirit’s ongoing work in our lives. The processes of ordinary living are so fragile, so immensely significant, so fraught with terror, that we desperately need someone beyond ourselves. We need the warmth and power of the Spirit to help us in whatever we have undertaken.

If you look back over the last 5, 10 or 20 years, where could you could say this? “Ah yes. So you, life-giving Spirit and Guide, were there all along.”

Carol Flinders writes in Enduring Lives, “There are families in South India that trace their ancestry back through the maternal line, and a friend who grew up in one of these clans used to swear that right along with the DNA, spiritual awareness flows down the mother-line…‘like a river.’” (p. 3)

Think of that lineage in Christianity. It includes some formidable women who came before us and cheer us on: Esther, Deborah, Mary Magdalene, Lydia, Catherine of Siena, Hildegard of Bingen, Teresa of Avila, Elizabeth Ann Seton, Dorothy Day, Thea Bowman. They are a powerful “cloud of witnesses” that understand the human struggle and support us through it. Each represents, within her own time and culture, a flowering of compassion, generosity and creativity that mark her as a descendant of Mary, the Mother of Jesus. “Like mother, like daughter.”

Now we continue this flow of abundant grace and virtue. The support of other women has contributed significantly to the contemporary flowering of women’s art, poetry, music, drama, enhanced roles in science, politics, medicine and business. While advances in those fields garner most of the attention, quieter support systems also thrive: a mother telling her daughter she needn’t endure an abusive husband, a friend who fills in for the mother of an autistic child, giving her a much-needed break, women whose gifts take the form of listening intently, parenting well, being a faithful friend or spouse. The rallying cry of black women in South Africa describes their community: “You have struck the women; you have struck the rock.”

Because today’s reading from the last supper discourse comes so near the end of Jesus’ life, it holds a privileged place in John’s gospel. Jesus doesn’t have much time left; he can’t waste his breath on trivia. So what he chooses must be absolutely central to his message. We, in turn, should hold these words in our hearts.

The shadow of death hangs over Jesus’ head as it does for all of us.

He addresses one of the hardest things in any relationship—that we will someday say a final goodbye as he is saying now. Even before that, we sometimes fail ea other; we betray those we love most. In the rush of events or too much pressure or not enough time, we miss each other’s shining radiance.

But despite those failures, God still chooses to make God’s dwelling place with us. Other than college dorm or summer camp, we rarely dwell with strangers. Usually, we live with those we love most. GOD’s wanting to dwell with us should allay any anxieties about our failures.

I go for years without thinking of them, then all of a sudden, they are center stage, vital figures in the unfolding drama of a cross-country move. Packing up a household, transporting it 1299 miles, then unloading it isn’t high on most peoples’ ideas for fun. Yet when the circumstances necessitate, you want these unsung heroes in your camp: movers.

They come, apparently, in waves. The first, the estimate person, calmly surveys the chaos of boxes, labels, tape, markers, and oddly angled furniture. He doesn’t bat an eye; he gives a surprisingly accurate guess on the weight. He must be attuned to the  emotional discombobulation of a person in this state of upheaval, and reassures, “you’re doing the tough part: deciding what goes and what stays.” (A process which disintgetrates dramatically in sharp correlation to the dwindly amount of time left.)

Then comes Moving Day, only slightly deterred by 2 feet of snow which shut down the city the day before. At 8:15 am the second wave of saints are shoveling the driveway, maneuvering a monstrous vehicle whose tires spin in the glacial canyons created by unploughed streets. Nothing fazes these guys: they introduce themselves courteously, shake hands with the shell-shocked homeowner, and move at whirlwind pace to inventory piles, tag, wrap carefully and load that van.

It’s a logistical nightmare, keeping my laundry baskets separate from someone else’s grill, the leaf for my table distinct from the leaf for someone else’s. But amazingly enough, after some delay, the third wave arrives: bringing it intact! My Stuff! It feels wonderfully familiar to see my couch in the rented living room, my pictures hanging on the walls. Despite unwieldly loads, monstrously heavy china cabinets and torturously narrow curves, stairs and hallways, the movers remain friendly and calm. When a piece fits perfectly into a designated space (sheer luck—no time to measure ahead), they exult, “Just like the movies!” and share my excitement.

After they drop my load, they’ll proceed to two more locations, until late at night, the van is finally empty. Then they face a long drive back. They will probably repeat this routine hundreds of times this month, and some have done this work over 20 years. I know: there are probably legitimate complaints about sleazy movers but I don’t want to hear them. I’m too busy being grateful and trying to decide: the armchair in this corner or that?

Good Shepherd Sunday rolls around again, and we dread being compared to sheep: wooly, stupid and directionally challenged.

So maybe we should focus instead on the shepherd: there are many reasons why he has been beloved for centuries.  We who have grown overly cynical about leadership, given the disasters in church, state and corporate worlds, can find refreshment in this portrait. This is not the hierarch who sacrifices children to pedophiles in order to preserve the church’s reputation. This is not the president who sends thousands to die in war for some unclear purpose. This is not the CEO who draws a salary astronomically higher than the least paid workers in the company.

In utter simplicity and without drawing attention to himself, this leader sacrifices his own life for his friends. He is confident and calm, nobly laying down his life. Although the thugs may seem to control him at his trial and crucifixion, he in reality is directing the order of events. Why? That seems a mystery, and is in fact the same question the poet Christina Rossetti asked: “Is one worth seeking, when Thou hast of Thine/ Ninety and nine?”

Such dedication is beyond human comprehension, but hints of a supreme love.

Kathy apologizes for the delay in posting an Easter message. She was called to Colorado suddenly to clear out and sell her home there, the final step in moving to the Bay Area to be near her beloved children and grandchildren. She prays it will become a resurrection…

God of Resurrection

and new life, you whose

dear son Jesus broke open

the tomb and the clutches

of death, help us to hear

the good news with the

enthusiasm of Mary Magdalene,

Peter and the beloved disciple.

May we too run with energy,

pause with prayerful reflection

and then believe as they did.

Help us hear “rumors of resurrection”

everywhere we go –and spread them.

***

As David Steindl-Rast points out in GRATEFULNESS: THE HEART OF PRAYER, the angel’s message to bewildered disciples doesn’t say that Jesus has come back to life. Our concept of life edges inevitably towards death. But Jesus has already passed through death. “He is not here” means that Jesus has gone far beyond our limited understanding. All we know is that “the tomb is open and empty, a fitting image for wide open hope.”

How touching: in his final hours, Jesus’ focus is not on the evil that will pin him to the cross, nor the imminent brutality, but on  a last gesture of concern for his friends. Today’s gospel begins with his  Passover meal. His final gifts to the disciples are nurturing bread, inspiriting wine, songs of praise, thanks and blessing.

One of the most heart-breaking lines in the account of Jesus’ prayer at Gethsemane is, “Why are you sleeping?” We know how miserably his friends failed him then, but what about ourselves in similar situations? Do we stand with the grieving, those who suffer Christ’s passion today?

As the disciples sleep, Jesus agrees to his Father’s plan, despite what it will cost him. He recognizes, as we should, that God is infinitely wiser than the limited human mind. With any of life’s most challenging passages—marriage, parenthood, a career, dying–we have no idea what we’re getting into. We grow into that awareness. During his passion, Jesus is not a child nor a slave, but a conscious adult, who agrees in love to whatever the Father asks.

This is a good week to take some quiet time and reflect on Jesus’ innocence and willingness. We could ask ourselves the unanswerable question voiced by God at the veneration of the cross on Good Friday, “My people, what have I done to you? How have I offended you? Answer me!”

Today’s gospel (John 11:1-45) prompts us to ask where we ourselves are bound and death-like. Have we capitulated to the culture’s definition of us as consumers? Have we bought into the put-downs tossed off by the careless that do unintended harm? Do we resort to old categories (gender, age, ethnicity, sexual orientation, marital status, socio-economic level), caging unique human beings? Jesus’ call comes to us all: “Lazarus come forth!” Shed those paralyzed trappings; enter into new and abundant life.

It is marvelous to consider Martha’s role in this miracle. She starts with an understandable complaint: “If you’d come sooner, my brother wouldn’t have died.” Yet she dares to hope for more, just as Mary once told Jesus at Cana, “they have no more wine.” Martha is far more creative than the bystanders, who never dream that this “Johnny-Come-Lately” could defy death and wrench their friend from the tomb.

Approaching his passion, it’s almost as if Jesus needs one slight affirmation. He must wonder whether those who’d been with him so long had the slightest glimmer of understanding. Peter had once professed that Jesus was the Christ, but in the next verse, Jesus is warning him because of his stupidity, “get thee behind me, Satan!” Martha, on the other hand, gives Jesus what he needs: her belief that he is “the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world.” Encouraged by her trust, Jesus asserts his truest identity: “the resurrection and the life.”

Scripture scholar Thomas Brodie writes of the man born blind: His first words, ”ego eimi” mean literally, “I am.” But there’s more to this than a simple self-identification. They also place him in line with God’s self-definition, “I am who am,” and Jesus’ string of identifiers elsewhere in John: I am the bread of life (6:35) and light of the world. This spunky, uneducated man represents us all, made in God’s image. (The Gospel According to John New York: Oxford University Press, 1993, 55.)

Furthermore, the formerly blind man models how to trust. He’s so grateful to Jesus he believes him completely, and bows in reverence to him. He may not have read anything, but he stands in sharp contrast to the Pharisees who desperately cling to a tired tradition: “we are disciples of Moses.” Their blindness keeps them from seeing how awesomely God works in the present.

We shouldn’t pick on them when we all have our blind spots. Sometimes, metaphorically, we choose to hang out in the dark basement, rather than the gorgeous, light-filled ballroom to which God invites us. If we wallow in despair or anxiety, we overlook our amazing identity: created like God.